#i wrote it directly in the text box

[rcmclachlan]

wind finding

buck/tommy

8x14/8x15 spec fic

I wrote this right before my first morning meeting, so if it's rushed and makes no sense, I'm well aware. Enjoy!

+

The very second Tommy went with helicopters, people came crawling out of the woodwork to offer their two cents on everything from industry politics (all dangled carrots and empty promises) to what constitutes a good operator (whoever's actually signing your paycheck at the time) to which jobs would bring in the most money (ditching helicopters entirely in favor of planes) to the best ways to manage stress (avoiding utility altogether).

But the one piece of advice Tommy has never forgotten came from one of his first operators in Afghanistan, who had a face like a mountain crag and every word that came out of his mouth had to first find its way around the wad of dip permanently attached to his bottom gums.

"Being able to find the wind is the only skill you need to nail down, or else you're gonna frag out faster'n you can say 'high as bat pussy'. The odds of being able to see the leaves on a fuckin' tree are less'n nothin' out here, never mind spottin' a fuckin' windsock, Kinard. The second you get in the air, you just listen to your bird; she'll tell you point blank where the wind is, so long as you've got your ears on."

Then Warrant Officer Harold hocked a loogie the size of a crow at the ground and stormed away, shouting, "PRIVATE KEATON, IF YOU DON'T STOP FONDLIN' THAT REFUEL PROBE I'M GONNA SHOVE IT IN YOUR DICK HOLE!"

Twenty years later, Tommy's in the cockpit of his favorite AW139 with the mouth of a glock pressed right above his brain stem, and the second he achieves optimal altitude, he finds the wind.

"You make it look so effortless, like it's just something your body does. Like breathing," Evan had said during their one and only legal flight together, like he wasn't furious that Tommy had woken him up at 3:30 in the morning on his day off to go for a joyride. Even as the sun peeked over the horizon to see if the coast was clear, it couldn't hope to match the sheer brightness of Evan's smile.

If being able to find the wind wasn't practically part of his autonomic nervous system at this point in his career, Tommy'd have no business being in the air at all.

"Remember," the guy with the gun, Remo, murmurs into the headset he'd forced Tommy to give him. "Top of the Aon. We're making the switch there."

"Nakatomi Tower would be better for this sort of thing," Tommy mutters.

Instead of being whipped with the gun, the speaker in his ear crackles with Remo's laughter. "I was more partial to the second film."

Tommy grips the cyclic a little tighter. "That's the worst thing you've admitted to so far."

It's not. Bombing multiple police stations was bad enough, but one of them was right next to a school. The last thing that came through the comms before Remo's buddies hacked it was the 118 being called to 309 Lucas Ave in Westlake North for fire containment and emergency medical assistance.

He glances at the dashboard. Tucked right above the radar is a little photo he'd printed out at his local CVS on a whim while he was getting a 'Happy 80th birthday, grandma!" card for Sal. It's barely anything: a portrait forced to inhabit a 4x4 square, so the quality is extra shitty. But the man in it is smiling brighter than a sunrise over the ocean, and Tommy's heart gives a pitiful thud just looking at it.

Melton would've shit a brick if he'd known about it. Despite what Hollywood would have the general populace believe, having pictures of loved ones on a pilot's dashboard can be a hell of a distraction. It goes against LAFD regs.

But having spent the last month reacquainting himself with Evan's smile and the wild hope that they could have a future together, it felt right to tack the photo up. He was professional enough that he wouldn't let it get in the way of the job.

He thinks of Evan watching him from the bed this morning, tangled up in sheets that smelled like the both of them. He thinks of the blurred, sleep-damp smile on Evan's face as Tommy hid the evidence of what they got up to the previous night.

"You're covering up a masterpiece," Evan had said, voice a little blurred with sleep. "That's some of my best work."

"Let me guess: if I connect all the hickeys, it's gonna turn into a dolphin or something?"

Evan had thrown back his head on the pillow and cackled, and Tommy had thought, We could build a life on this.

Except Evan is pulling tiny bodies out of the ruins of Gratts Elementary, Tommy's got a gun to his head, and Remo's little cell of opportunistic assholes are using the bombings across the city to distract from the 51% blockchain hack they pulled off two hours ago. Tommy doesn't understand crypto for the life of him, but what he got from Harbor's newest probie was something something a blockchain’s distributed ledger was changed and double spending was enabled. At the time, it seemed like a lot of bullshit that boiled down to "they now control the invisible internet money conveyor belt," but at least 200 people are dead, and according to Remo, there are still 70 bombs wired and ready to explode on his say-so.

Unless Tommy flies him and his weird, silent friend to the Aon, where someone's going to be waiting to whisk them away to all points nowhere. Tommy knows exactly how this is going to shake out: the second he lands the bird, Remo's going to bury a bullet in Tommy's brain before disappearing into the wind, leaving the world in shambles. But it won't be enough. Remo will get bored before long—the smart, psychotic ones always do—and then pop back up at some point to do even worse if he has the opportunity.

Ten years from now, they'll make a documentary series about all this. Evan will watch it, because he's contractually obligated to seek out things that will hurt him for some reason, and it'll probably be like cutting open a just-healed wound. He'll spiral until Maddie or one of the others forces him to stop. The series will be called something stupid, like Finding Remo.

That is, of course, if Remo has the opportunity.

Swallowing, throat clicking, Tommy glances at the photo on the dashboard. Evan beams at him from where he's posing like the dorkiest Greek god in the pantheon on top of a boulder somewhere on the Temescal Canyon Trail. That had been a good day. It seemed like the start of a lifetime of them.

He looks away and out the windshield where, up ahead, the Aon stands tall against the sky. But standing taller, and closer, is Library Tower.

Exhaling, Tommy keeps his eyes straight. "Listen, you can put the gun away. It's not the threat you think it is."

"No?" Remo presses the glock harder against the back of Tommy's head, and Tommy stifles a wince. "You think I won't shoot you?"

"Oh, I know you're gonna shoot me," Tommy says, almost cheerfully. He refuses to look any closer at that. "I just don't think you're gonna do it while we're hanging 900 feet above the city."

The pause that follows is probably only a second or two, but it feels like a decade. Finally, the press of metal disappears, and Tommy hears the safety clicking back on.

"You seem pretty calm about all this," Remo says, curiosity making his already light voice positively airy.

Tommy shrugs. "Last year I stole one of these to fly some friends into a category 5 hurricane, then landed it on a capsized cruise ship. This? Doesn't even break a 6.5 on my Crazy Shit-o-meter."

Remo laughs, and Tommy hears the tell tale rustling of the gun being holstered. Thankfully the rotors completely drown out the sound of his heart pounding, which would otherwise be audible from space.

"Let me just say that of all the pilots I could've kidnapped, you're by far the most entertaining."

"Thank you," Tommy says seriously.

Below them, the Walt Disney Concert Hall is lit up for the night's show. They'll be passing the BoA Financial Center, and from there it's only a couple of minutes until their destination.

"Hey, uh, since this does end with me getting shot," Tommy ventures, trying to keep a lid on the massive amounts of adrenaline that are being dumped into his bloodstream. He must be visibly vibrating. "Could I... could I make a call?"

Remo snorts. "Let me guess: 9-1-1?"

Okay, that's kind of funny. Tommy cracks a grin. "Not quite. I have someone... I have someone, and there's something important I need to say."

One of the drawbacks of a helicopter's cockpit is there's no rearview mirror, which would really come in handy right now. He has no idea what Remo's face is doing. He has no idea if he's looking at his silent companion and having some kind of wordless conversation, if Remo is the kind of guy who would grant the last wish of someone he's using.

Finally, after what feels like years, Remo says, "You get ten seconds. You'd better make them count."

He's done more with less. "That's fair. But I'm either going to need you to call it for me or let me hook into an open line."

The air inside the helicopter seems to squeeze inward. "An open line?"

"My... my boyfriend's LAFD." He bites down on the inside of his cheek as they pass the BoA Center on the left, and hopes against all hope that Remo isn't too much of a homophobe to deny the request.

But surprise, surprise. Remo only laughs and says, "How romantic. Urs, get him on an open line to his firefighter boyfriend. It's the least we can do after everything he's done to help us."

Tommy can't see what Urs is doing, but his headset crackles with the familiar static of a live comms line.

"Ten seconds," Remo reminds him. Below them, the roof of Library Tower seems both miles away and impossibly close.

It's all he needs.

"This is LAFD pilot Tom Kinard. Evan Buckley, if you're listening, look in the drawer to the right of the microwave. There's something in there for you." He quietly undoes his harness and kills the engine. "It's yours. It's always been yours."

Just as the AW139 is about to clear the roof of the tower, Tommy shoulders open the door and kicks off into the sky.

The wind is blowing southeast.

+

"N-No, no, no, hey, it's okay, don't fight it, you're okay—hey, I need some help in here! He's waking up! Tommy, they're going to take it out, just wait."

There's a tree trunk growing out of his throat, but trying to move it is impossible, and the effort takes everything out of him. So he gives up, gagging and drifting in and out, then decides to just climb the entire length of the tree to get a look at the view. From there, it's just a matter of finding the wind and floating away with it.

The next time he surfaces, there's something hard over his face, warm and humid, and when the clouds clear from his vision he's able to see two things: Evan's wide-eyed expression of relief, and a giant orange poster board in Lucy's familiar, blocky handwriting that says 2 DAYS SINCE KINARD LAST TAUNTED GOD.

There's a 1 in front of the 2, but it's crossed out.

"Hey!" Evan breathes, and the mattress at Tommy's hip dips a little under his weight. "H-Hey, there you are. Morning! Well, not, uh, morning exactly—it's like 8 o'clock at night—but you're awake!"

"I am." It's muffled by the oxygen mask.

"How are you feeling? Are you in any pain?" Evan leans in, blocking Tommy's view of anything else. He hasn't shaved in a bit, and the hair at his temples looks a little greasy. He's the most gorgeous thing Tommy's ever laid eyes on.

"No pain," Tommy rasps. "M'body's full'f cotton."

Evan smiles a little. "Yeah, they've got you on the good stuff. I can't tell you how many bones you've broken, because it seems like they're still finding them. The doctor did say he'd never seen a pneumothorax quite like yours before, though. He keeps bringing other doctors in to look at your scans. I think a couple of them cancelled their surgeries so they could watch yours yesterday. You're like a celebrity. You've got, like, four tubes in you sucking the excess air out."

For a second, Tommy has no idea what he's talking about. Pneumothorax? How'd he manage that? Lucy's gonna give him shit for the next year.

Then, like a breeze kicking up from the west, it all comes sweeping in. Something starts beeping a little erratically. "Did—did he... he didn't... did... R-Remo...?"

The words are slow and thick, like they have to climb over the broken branches the tree had left behind, but understanding lights up Evan's face almost immediately. He thinks Evan must be holding his hand, because there's pressure on his fingers that feels like it's coming from another room.

"He didn't," Evan says softly, but there's a sparkle of brutal satisfaction in his eyes that Tommy can't look away from. "The helicopter went down like a sack of bricks after you ditched it. It took out the coffee shop in the library. Before you ask: they close at 2:30, so no one had been in there for hours. No one was hurt. Except, well, what's his name."

Tommy closes his eyes and breathes in the canned, almost metallic stuff they're feeding him through the mask. It's so pure, it makes him a little dizzy.

"Good." His sinuses prickle hotly. "Good. That's..."

"Hey, hey, shhh," Evan coos, and Tommy opens his eyes just in time to see Evan press his mouth lushly to the curve of the oxygen mask. Despite whatever they're giving him, Tommy's lips ache with the need to feel that kiss.

"Evan," he whispers.

When he pulls back, Evan's got a wide, almost gleeful grin tugging the corners of his mouth to his ears. He looks like he's about to blow up a Gotham City school bus to try and draw out Batman. Instead, he lifts his left hand.

The lights in the room are low, so the ring on Evan's finger doesn't really glint as brightly as it should, but the light in Evan's eyes is almost blinding.

"Drawer to the right of the microwave, huh?" He laughs a little, like it's bubbling out of him, like he can't stop it. "How long had that been in there?"

It takes a moment for Tommy to pick through the cobwebs in his brain. "Mm... got it... after we did that flight over... hm... Channel Islands."

Evan stares at him, then his bubbly laughter morphs into maniacal cackling.

Tommy glances down at his hands to see if they gave him a button for the pain meds he's on. He's going to dilaudid himself into oblivion.

"That was four months into..." Evan uses their joined hands to wipe away the tears beading on his lashes. "When I asked you to move in, you ran away so fast you left a trail of dust behind you. But you bought an engagement ring four months into dating me?"

"In my defense," Tommy says, suddenly very jealous of Remo for dying a fiery death in the LA Library coffee shop. "I knew... you were it for me. You, on the other hand, had no idea... hm... what you wanted. Asking me... to move in wasn't—it wasn't about me."

Pursing his lips, Evan ducks his head and doesn't deny it, but when he tilts his chin up, the only thing on his face is bare, earnest truth. "I knew I wanted you, Tommy, any way I could have you. I didn't know what that looked like, and not knowing made me... I don't know if you've noticed, but I tend to cling when I panic."

Tommy thinks back over the last month—how every time he showed up on Eddie's doorstep, Evan practically threw himself at Tommy, clutching at him like he was afraid Tommy might go back down the walkway and leave; how getting up to take a piss or grab a Gatorade meant leaving the bed, and the look on Evan's face every time was like watching a car crash—and squeezes Evan's hand. He thinks he does, at least.

"Do you... know what it looks like now?" It takes almost all his strength to get the words out. A wave of exhaustion rolls over him, and he pinwheels a little with it. Kicking his way back to the surface takes concentration.

Evan lifts his hand again. The ring fits his finger perfectly. "It looks like you, about to fall asleep."

Another wave bowls him over, and he fights to keep his eyes open. Lucy's stupid poster blurs like someone's upturned a can of Sprite over it.

"I'll be here when you wake up, and so will half the LAPD and a bunch of people from the FBI. You're the hero of the day," Evan murmurs, and Tommy grumbles a little. "But, hey, Tommy. Before you—how did you know? How'd you know I was it for you?"

Even as he's being pulled down into the dark, he looks up, and he sees the surface roiling, dancing with the light of an old sunrise that couldn't hold a candle to the phenomenon of Evan Buckley's smile.

"Found th' wind," Tommy mumbles, drifting down, down, down. "'s easy. Like breathing."

[evilwriter37]

62 for dagcup >:3

“It’s only one night, we’ll just share the bed.”

“Sh-share it?” Hiccup stammered, looking back and forth between the bed and the man who had suggested it. Heat flushed his cheeks.

Dagur crossed his arms over his chest, smiling at him almost knowingly. “What? Too homoerotic or something?”

Hiccup nearly choked. Dagur knew then. He knew he was, well, interested in him.

“No, no! Not that! It’s just, uh… The floor looks nice.” Hiccup slapped a hand over his face for how horrible that sounded. No, the floor did not look nice.

Dagur laughed, and it wasn’t that maniacal laugh of his, but a genuine one. He stepped closer. “Hiccup, it’s okay. I know you like me.”

Hiccup felt his heart fluttering in his throat. He peeked out at Dagur from behind his fingers. “You do?”

“Yeah. And, I mean, I can take the floor if—”

“No one takes the floor,” Hiccup stubbornly decided, pulling his hand from his face. He tried taking a deep breath. “You’re right. It’s just one night.”

Dagur smirked at him, and it just served to make Hiccup’s cheeks burn hotter.

“A lot can happen in one night,” he said.

[evilwriter37]

It was perfect.

Waking up, at least for Hiccup, was not always a perfect or pleasant thing. Usually his mind would be buzzing, or anxiety or urgency would be twisting his gut. Or his stump would be hurting.

There were many unpleasant ways in which Hiccup could wake up.

This was not one of them.

Instead, this was Astrid with the backdrop of a lovely and rosy dawn he barely noticed. He was all focused on her: the softness in her face that only those close to her were granted permission to see, the quiet peace of sleep and contentment over her closed eyes. Yes, her hair, admittedly, was a mess, but a mess of flax and gold. Hiccup wondered if she would let him comb it and braid it for her.

Her arms were around him. It was a rather loose hold on him, but he didn't need more than that. They were on their sides facing each other. They'd fallen asleep that way after their love making and Hiccup fussing over getting the furs in just the right position to cover them both. Astrid had claimed to not care about the extra warmth the furs provided, but had snuggled closer to Hiccup with a small smile once he'd tucked them both in.

So busy staring at Astrid's beauty was he, that it took some time for Hiccup to realize that he couldn't feel his right elbow, forearm, and hand, and that there was an unpleasant tingling in his upper arm and shoulder. It was beneath Astrid, sensation cut off by the weight of her.

And for the moment, Hiccup didn't care, and he didn't move. He'd gotten the pleasure of waking in her arms, and wanted to return that, wanted her to feel the pleasure of waking in his.

I hope Hiccup woke up in her arms.

[sam-keeper]

Hey Look At This Comic: The Nib

the kind of essay comics published in The Nib (now sadly defunct) tended to lean towards illustrative panel contents. in a lot of their comics, the images show, basically, what the text describes. it's a way of producing comics that emphasizes clarity of information delivery and tends to have some level of redundancy, with relatively straightforward metaphors. one piece in the "color" issue by Erlend Sandøy bucks that trend in really extravagant fashion. the comic goes against an awful lot of conventional advice about clarity of panel layouts, often choosing sprawling nonlinear layouts or notional strips that run from top to bottom (see the two pages above). the metaphors also come thick and fast, and although most are straightforward there's enough just happening on every page that it enforces a kind of slower exploration of the details.

like, I love the way color (fittingly) and composition work in the fourth page. the smiling bike riders in the bottom catch me, they're discordant with the primary subject of the page--the failure of green parties in coalition to enact their plans and stick to their promises. what's harder to see at a quick glance is the third bike rider who's careened straight into the smog that makes up the frame. it's obscure enough in the print that I totally missed it and put my big dumb fat fingers over it when I was taking the photo! 😩 it's a fun little trick cause it takes the frame, which I think tends even when representational to recede into the background, into another area of panel content. but more than that it brings into sharper focus the overall rhetoric of the page: that green movements have achieved mainly small areas of apparent natural recovery, pushing the deeper structural issues to the margins of discourse. those issues are, however, inescapable.

(I do think the bit about the german greens totally failing to reduce coal power but succeeding in banning nuclear power is quite funny, like gosh do you think those two facts might have some causal relationship? ha ha oops)

the sprawling nonlinearity is also really well suited to a page like the overview of the countries where green parties hold power, which IS a sprawling, informationally non-hierarchical subject. how the reader navigates this page doesn't matter, and it's nice to see someone breaking from the McCloudian/Eisnerian focus on the sequence as be all end all. more than that, though, I just think it's clever and charming! What a good looking gosh darned page! composing the globe out of foliage and having pop-out informational panels be branches with their own leaves? it's great stuff, a pretty immediately graspable visual device that's both pertinent and super flexible. there's all these interesting little details--like look at the ballots flowing out of the US like leaves stuffing that ballot box, juxtaposed with the text pointing out that first past the post means all these votes go, essentially, into the void. the image doesn't make that last bit clear, and the text doesn't spell out the leaf metaphor, it's a gestalt. that's comix, baby! awoo!

the whole coverage within this comic in particular feels like a very even handed account of the green political movement's achievements and also some of its ideological failures--again, often conveyed not directly through fairly neutral text but instantiated in the art itself. it's just one of a number of comics in this issue that feel bold and experimental, and when I first wrote this review in 2023 I suggested picking up a copy of the Color Issue. in fact, it looks like you still can--I guess that must be one issue that remains in stock. but The Nib itself is no more and most of its issues, including gems of experimental documentary comicking like this, are out of print. thankfully, on the way out founder Matt Bors decided to put the entire collection onto the Internet Archive. you can read the color issue there.

this review originally ran on Cohost, Thu, Feb 23, 2023. I am porting these reviews with minor editing over to Tumblr and eventually to my own website, because websites and periodicals may die, but comics are forever.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for playing music in my shared apartment?

🎵🎧 so I can find it

I live in a shared apartment with two other girls (L and S). It is a student apartment because we are all university students, but it's not provided by the school. Just an apartment complex that markets to students.

I've been with my boyfriend for almost a year, and he comes over on weekends sometimes and we hang out or go to dinner, do homework, and yes, have sex. I have tried to be the ideal roommate. I never use my speakers to play music, only headphones. I have shushed my boyfriend when he laughs super loud during TV shows. Meanwhile, both of my roommates have a habit of playing loud music, burning candles and incense, having half a dozen people over and doing karaoke super loud and late at night with the only warning "having some friends over later."

Last weekend, my roommate L allowed her friend over to work on their small business stuff in the common area (L was not at the apartment, she let the friend in and then went to work). The friend had the TV playing in the living room, and my boyfriend and I keep pretty quiet when we're having sex. I guess we were louder than we thought, because I got a text later from L basically reading me the riot act for making her friend uncomfortable and being inconsiderate. The friend seems nice, I didn't intend to make him uncomfortable. L also said that there have been several times that she or S have heard my boyfriend and I, and that it's "fucking nasty" and I need to be more considerate of the fact that we share a living space. I thought this was pretty hypocritical given that I am almost always super quiet because the walls are thin, and neither of them bothers to keep the noise down.

But I'm not trying to start a fight, so I told her I didn't realize we could be heard and I would make an effort to prevent it in the future.

So. Last night was Valentine's. (Wrote this when the ask box was closed lol) My boyfriend and I went out to dinner, spent some time playing a board game in my room, and then I turned on some music on my speakers, turned it up loud enough that it would have masked normal conversation volume, and we had sex. The music was loud enough that, unless we spoke directly into one another's ears or raised our voices, my boyfriend and I couldn't hear each other.

I got a furious text this morning because I only played music when it was obvious that we were banging, so that made it gross to L, like I was broadcasting what I was doing to the rest of the apartment. I told her that she should do what I did and buy some headphones, and otherwise she could decide whether she preferred to hear my music or to hear me getting laid.

She said I'm disgusting and to grow up.

On the one hand, it WAS obvious that I was playing the music to mask the sounds. I don't like music during sex, but I was trying to be considerate (even if I was pissed). I don't think that I should have to stop having sex in my own home that I pay for, especially when I am already making efforts to keep it pretty quiet. L seems to think that I shouldn't do it at all while someone is home, but S is almost ALWAYS home, and tbh, I don't think it's unreasonable to want to have some intimacy with my boyfriend in my own home, especially on Valentine's Day. But I'll admit, part of me felt pretty spiteful & vindicated when I started the music, so AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[memories-of-ancients]

Early American Presidential Elections Were Way Different Than They Are Today

It's election season again, boy it sure is. I can tell because I now get daily texts from Joe Biden asking for money which is interesting because I never gave him my phone number and Trump has been sending me enough ads through the mail that it clutters my mail box if I don't empty it more than once a week. So in celebration of this great competition between two philosopher kings and elder statesmen I wish to detail how different presidential elections were in the opening decades of the United States compared to today. And I can tell you, elections back then were totally different, almost unrecognizeable.

First, most people could not vote. Early American elections were not democratic by any means. Of course women couldn't vote, so automatically half the population was ineligible by that fact alone. Also men who belonged to a minority groups couldn't vote. However, if you were a white man, odds were you were still ineligible to vote. All of the states had wealth and property requirements for voting, which made it so that the only men who were eligible to vote were wealthy white males. As a result, until the 1830's only around 2-3% perhaps 5% at most of all people were eligible to vote.

Secondly, you did not directly vote for the president at all. Presidents were not even listed on ballots. When you went to vote, you voted for your state's electors, the presidents weren't even listed on the ballot. In George Washington's diary entry for Jan 7th, 1789 he wrote that he voted for "Doctor Blackburn and Colonel Stuart", who were the electors he voted for in his district. The following is a surviving ticket from the 1789 Maryland Presidential election held by the Smithsonian ...

This was of course if you lived in a state where popular vote was used in presidential elections. According to the US Constitution it's up to the states to determine how electors are chosen. At the time many electors were chosen by state legislatures, or appointed by state governors. In the very first election (1789), only Maryland and Virginia used popular vote to choose electors. Incredibly New York failed to appoint electors altogether! In the next election, (1792), Massachusetts and Pennsylvania tagged on. Gradually other states did the same until by 1830 most states used popular vote to decide elections. The results are goofy looking popular vote maps like this (election of 1796), the gray areas being places where popular vote was not used, or there were not enough wealthy white men to vote.

Today we still use the Electoral College to elect the president, although there is a pretense of direct elections. When voting for president you are actually still voting for your state's electors, but it's generally agreed and expected that if your state's majority votes for a certain candidate, the electors will likewise vote for that candidate. And of course popular vote is used in every state to choose electors, for a state to do otherwise would be a national scandal even though it would be technically constitutional.

Finally, president and vice president were not on the same ticket. Today, for example, if you voted for Joe Biden, you are also voting for Kamala Harris as vice president. Until the passage of the 12th Amendment in 1804 the way it worked was the candidate who was runner up became vice president. So today if we used the same system, Joe Biden would be president, and Donald Trump would be vice president. Likewise in the previous administration, Donald Trump would be president, and Hillary Clinton would be vice president. I suggest we repeal the 12th Amendment.

[callipraxia]

Further Interview Analysis: the "Ford Plan," and Bill's Blind Spot

I didn’t sleep again the night after the “musical Weirdmageddon” post, and wrote a lot of loopy stuff the next day, and posted none of it. But then I slept, so yay, time for an attempt at some actual analysis! Original interview is, as before, here, with credit and thanks to @fordtato and @hkthatgffan.

"I think that Bill was trying to find Ford, but I think- I always think of Bill as like, this guy who has, like - you know, he’s stirring the pot of soup that is the Ford plan, and he’s got like 900 pots of soup across the universe of different things he’s working on, and at any given moment, he’s so cocksure that it’s all gonna work his way eventually."

Bill’s a trillion years old, so it’s like, Ford disappearing for thirty years is like- [snaps fingers] is like somebody saying they’re ghosting you and then texting you the next weekend, you know what I mean? He’s like- he’s like [handwave] “Ford’s gonna- Ford’s gonna be back. Ohh, [air quotes] we had such a big fight, Ford’s sooo mad at me,” oh, you know, “our will-they-won’t-they-take-over-the-universe relationship, like, he’s gonna- he’s gonna march off in a huff, and he’ll be back, ‘cause we’re- is Ford gonna find anyone else in the multiverse that strokes his ego as well as me?” Is there anybody else in the universe that’s gonna make Ford feel as important as Bill? No, of course not, Ford needs validation, and so Bill knows Ford’s gonna be back eventually. 

...so, Bill still had a "Ford plan," did he? Like, some active plan that involved using Ford in some way to escape the Nightmare Dimension? Interesting.

I always interpreted his cliche-villain-gloating routine when Ford confronts him about being a liar as the point where Bill was ready to discard Ford altogether. If he had wanted to - if he could have been bothered - after all, he probably would have had a very high chance of somehow manipulating Ford out of the realization that he'd been played: Ford had been literally worshiping Bill a few days earlier. He was basically a cultist, and he was not only someone who'd spent way too long talking to Bill, he was also someone who could only confront Bill on Bill's turf, so to speak. But Bill didn't even try to turn it all around, because (ran my reasoning) he'd gotten what he really needed: the Portal existed, and you can't close Pandora's box. The technology was there. It would not, from Bill's trillions-of-years perspective, have taken very long to find some way to manipulate someone else into rebuilding the Portal once it existed even given Ford's attempts to hide the plans. Bill was scribbling on the Journal in invisible ink after Ford's last entry, before he buried it but after he wrote all about his plans in some detail, even drawing a map to J2. The Journal separation plan would have been laughably easy for Bill to work around. So at that point, I assumed that the only reason Bill didn't arrange for Ford to - if I may be blunt - kill himself the first time he blacked out was because Bill was basically getting off on the psychological torture and wanted to see how long he could keep it going/enjoy himself until Ford literally died of exhaustion. Ford certainly seems to think he'd have been killed if he had lost the game of 'hide and seek' in the asteroid field. I thought the idea that "Bill used Ford until he used him up, and now he was done with him" was basically canon, and that Bill paid no more attention to him from that point onward than you would pay to a broken Solo cup in the trash until Ford did something unexpected - ie, survived the Multiverse, came back with a death ray, apparently took out a few Henchmaniacs, almost shot Bill himself, and then survived the experience.

But here we have what I suppose amounts of authorial commentary which seems to directly contradict the idea that Bill didn't even regard Ford was worth finding and/or killing. Bill was looking for Ford, all those years - not all that intently, apparently, or really very long from Bill's point of view, of course, but still - and Bill still had a plan for Ford. Bill also, if I'm reading that right, seems to have really just expected Ford to come back, of his own free will, to join him eventually, not to kill him.

Of course, it's possible I'm reading that wrong, and Bill just knew that killing him would also give Ford a massive ego boost and that Ford would have to eventually reenter his orbit in order to attempt to do so. It's also true that Bill just not being able to accept rejection in no way, by itself, implies he wasn't planning to go "hahahaha, no" and kill Ford fifteen seconds after he finished begging Bill for forgiveness. But the 'Ford plan' bit seems to undermine that. Let's assume the hesitations and half-sentences are Hirsch improvising, not Bill actually cutting off a thought he might not like the end of. So was Bill genuinely never planning to kill Ford after he bumbled into the Nightmare Realm back in '82? And if not - what in the world was he planning to do to him once one of the Henchmaniacs caught him, then? And why do I have the feeling that whatever it was would have made murder seem both a) kind and b) not at all disturbing by comparison?

Also gives us, in a way, some insight into Bill. Kinda. We've always known that there's this...level, this very deep, seldom-relevant but very important level, on which Bill doesn't quite understand how people work. We see it primarily in the mistakes that Bill makes with Stan and Mabel. Maybe there was nothing he could have said or done in the situation with Stan to save himself, Stan had reached the point of literally suicidal determination and there's really not much you can do to budge someone at that point and especially not once their consciousness has already caught fire, but with Mabel - in Sock Opera, all Bill needed to do to win was keep his mouth shut for three more seconds. He was clever enough to see how Dipper and Mabel's relationship could be exploited to get Dipper to do what he wanted, but he did the exact opposite of what he should have done to get Mabel to do what he wanted, because for one thing he underestimates Mabel and for another...it comes back to that elusive Thing that Bill can't or won't understand about the deeper levels of humans. Or maybe it's Things, plural, and a distinct one for each person, but there's something there at the bottom of the personality that Bill apparently can't jive with.

With Ford, for instance, he clearly underestimates the power of genuine self-hatred and remorse. Bill may feel bad in some way about what he did to his homeworld, but look at the actual words of the Axolotl's prophecy: he feels that way not because he has realized at some point that what he did was fundamentally wrong, but because he wants to go home and can't. Essentially, his regret is for his own inconvenience. And in a lot of ways, I can see how that could have translated into him feeling he did, in fact, know all he needed to know to push Ford's buttons, because while it's never spelled out for us, it seems, based on his habit of carrying around family photographs on his person apparently since college despite not getting on well at all with his family, that there was maybe some tiny part of Ford that also wanted to "go home," and not just to flip off the town. Ford was also someone who deeply feared the consequences of his actions, if you read between the lines in the Journal - his worries about a 'Close Encounter' with the government, his scrawling that he must not lose his nerve on some early Portal notes, his talking more and more about Fiddleford losing his nerve in a way that starts seeming kind of projection-y - and Bill could certainly understand that fear perfectly well: we see Bill panic outright in the finale when he realizes he's out of options he's going to remotely like. In the unlikely event Stan would or even could save him, Stan obviously wouldn’t have done so so on Bill's own terms: Bill would have been stuck making an honest deal for once, or else left with the options of "die" and "take a one-in-a-million shot and do his invocation of the 'Ancient Power,' possibly putting himself squarely into the hands of an enemy whose full aims he probably does not know." But then, that's Bill's flaw - the things that drove him to become what he did were revenge and the fear of Death, of the ultimate loss of control. His arrogance makes him think he can take most any situation, no matter how disadvantageous it might seem, and twist it around sooner or later, but Death - well, that's it, ain't it? Or, as Horace might say in a really old translation:

When life is o'er, and Minos has rehearsed The grand last doom, Not birth, nor eloquence, nor worth, shall burst Torquatus' tomb.

(Horace, Ode 4.7. The Odes and Carmen Saeculare of Horace. John Conington. trans. London. George Bell and Sons. 1882.)

Bit different from most translations I've read, but close enough and in the public domain I believe, so we'll go with that. It's possible that Bill's...unique...state of existence may actually make dying an even more terrifying prospect for him than it for the rest of us. He became what he was to escape limitations, including mortality - but after all that killing and burning and transformation, he found out that he might not ever die, but that he could still be destroyed. And even when he found his own 'territory', it started decaying around him, which proved that dimensions, too, can die even if nobody is apparently actively trying to destroy them. What happens to him then? That's what he's afraid of, and he cannot quite grasp that others might be able to overcome that fear in service of either another principle or another fear. That's where he keeps running into trouble in the series timeline, too. It never occurred to him that Gideon might have enough humanity to want Mabel to actually care about him, instead of just about possessing her - much less that Gideon could want that enough to risk death for it. It was inconceivable to him that Dipper and Mabel could voluntarily turn their backs on even a blatantly false paradise to willingly walk into a living hell, just because it was the right thing to do. And as for Ford and Stan....

Well, on one level, he's right about Ford. When he met Ford, they did have certain things in common: frustration, ambition, deep and secret regrets, loneliness, and fear of facing the consequences. Ford's desire for respectability and honor from those who had rejected him his whole life may have extended this even further for him than it went for Bill in some ways: he couldn't even admit to himself that what he was doing was totally self-interested, whereas Bill, like Stan, has long since come to terms with his own selfishness. And like Bill, Ford probably didn't even have the ability to see that no matter what he did, it would never be enough, and would never really satisfy him. But death? Ford doesn't fear death. Never really has, as far as I can tell, but he certainly doesn't now. The way he lives his life, the man might as well be courting death - sending it roses every week and buying all its drinks at the bar, so to speak. He and Bill both fear the consequences of their actions, but 'consequences' are a category, and it's just as possible to be afraid to live as it is to be afraid to die. And Stan...Stan is harder to be sure of. Certainly Stan's priority is always for self-preservation. He's probably depressed to some degree, and he will risk life and limb without hesitation when he perceives a threat to that which he loves, but that's something that usually happens in a crisis. He doesn't hesitate because he doesn't think about what he's doing, which is what makes the Final Deal such an incredible gesture for me - he not only had plenty of time to think about what was going to happen, but he had to actively take steps himself to enable it to happen. To me, at least, that seems the hardest thing...but then, the whole situation in the Fearamid is one that brings to mind some of my worst fears, to the point that I find the scene difficult to watch and I almost scrapped an entire 22,000-word story once just because it required me to write about a small part of it. I'm sure Bill risked death, in some fashion, to become what he is, and I'm sure he was afraid of failure every time - but he was less afraid of a bad outcome that might come from leaping at the chance for some semblance of life, any semblance of life, no matter what that might look like or how long the odds might be, than he was of doing what he knew would lead to...wherever even destructible gods go, when they go. This is why the Stans were the thing he couldn't account for, really. He couldn't conceive of having a priority higher than self-preservation, of overcoming his worst fear - and that was what destroyed him. Maybe, anyway.

It's sort of funny, actually - I started writing a completely different post yesterday about how to develop a new character based on some of Hirsch's remarks, and in the course of it, I made the remark that I found it hard to fathom how you could write any of Gravity Falls, at all, without knowing ahead of time that it is the story of (if I can make so bold as to quote my own story's dialogue) "the Faustus of New Jersey and His Knucklehead Brother and the Hazard Sign From Hell," and without at least a fairly good understanding of who those three people are and how they got there. If one looks at the story that way, I suppose you could say the events after their starting situation are also the story of these three being thrown up against the places where their real deepest fears lie, and seeing who has something he really, really will not compromise on...or at least, it did at the start of this paragraph. But did any of them, really? Bill blatantly fails that test, of course - Bill runs, just like he's been, in a way, running for his entire miserable existence. Ford comes close to what might have been a couple of breaking experiences for him - either surrendering to Bill or, had the memory wipe worked the way he thought it would, with living with whatever the fallout of essentially killing his brother would have been - but the universe was kind and stacked the deck just enough to let him cheat his way out of that one, at least for the most part. But what about Stan? He didn't want to die, but we already knew that he'd risk it for the kids, because we've seen him do that before. The way he went about it this time arguably took more courage than the others, when he just went in swinging at an immediate and obvious threat, but it was still an escalation on an established thing. Stan's real worst fear isn’t death - it’s of being alone again, of losing his family. That's the principle that overrides self-preservation for him. What would have happened if he'd been in Ford's shoes - required to take up the role not of the sacrifice, but of the one who performed it, giving up one member of the family to save the others? Could he have done that?

...though that is wandering from the topic I was originally talking about, isn't it. Which was that yeah, Bill is, in his way, as fallible as anyone else despite his immense resources - which is gonna be a fun topic to get into when I get around to the post in this series about writing higher intelligences, but that's also not the point, which was that Ford was never going to go back to Bill the way Bill thought he was, because Bill's inability to understand other people's ability to do things that he can't is a serious blind spot for him. It's the thoughts he can't have that doom him (probably...hopefully, anyway...), fortunately for the rest of us.

[the-queen-and-the-king]

A little piece of paradise - 26

Summary: It's Aaron's last day as the director of the BAU and as an FBI agent, the time for him to say a few words about the people who worked for him all those years.

Characters: the BAU team

Contents: pregnancy (remember, Emily is still pregnant), angst, sadness, bad pun, mention of alcohol, but also pride and joy and smile.

This text will be an AU with a sudden canon-divergence. I wrote it when I was rewatching the show, so many chapters will be directly related to some episodes of season 4. There will be 28 chapters.

PS : English is not my mother language so they are necessarily mistakes. Sorry about that.

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Read on AO3 / lire sur AO3

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Despite what Emily could tell, this week had flown by at the speed of light. Friday had finally dawned on him, and here he stood in this office he was about to leave, for the last time, in just a few hours' time. He had answered the last e-mails this morning before his entire mailbox was transferred to that of his successor. His weapons were returned to the federal armory, and his badge and plate were returned to the security center. In the days leading up to it, he'd already started clearing up, taking Jack's photos and creations home, his personal awards, a few trinkets, and the bottles he'd been given. Everything he now had to box up would go to a basement room dedicated to the belongings of agents who had left the department, before being destroyed: the plaque on his door, the display bearing his name on his desk, etc.

“Hotch,” called out a voice behind his back.

“Yes, I'm coming,” he said, turning to Derek. “All the current files are here.”

He pointed to the boxes piled up on the carpet, once stored in his cupboards, but whose arrangement he left to the free choice of the man who had just appeared behind him. It contained cases he'd handled jointly with Jason Gideon before they started recruiting other agents to help them. The co-founder of the BAU had disappeared without leaving any way of contacting him, so he was the only one left with a memory of these files.

“I put memos in all the ones where the suspect(s) are still at large. Same on the computer. The password is on the post-it under the keyboard and will have to be changed next week.”

 “Hotch…”

“You'll see how to cross-reference your session with mine with the IT. All the passwords for all the platforms are in the directory there,” he continued, pointing to the object in question. “If you can't read my handwriting, ask Dave or Emily, they're used to it.”

“Hotch…”

“Ah, yes, the duplicate keys to the cupboards and boxes are in Penelope's office,” he remembered, barely. “There's so much junk in her place that I figured it was the best hideout in the world. Anyone would give up before finding anything.”

“Hotch, it's all right,” Morgan interrupted, putting a hand on his bicep. “Besides, you've already told me all this three times since this morning.”

“Oh. Sorry.”

He had so much to think about and was so afraid of forgetting something essential in the rush to leave, that he was obviously harping on the same things. It had to be said, too, that there was nothing trivial about their profession, and his position remained a strategic one at the agency. Although JJ assumed his duties as a go-between for local authorities and journalists, he had kept the whole political and administrative side of the position to himself, and Derek couldn't do without it. As the man was not of the same character as himself, he had tried to slip in as many useful instructions as possible, so that he would not offend anyone, mistrust some or hesitate to lean on others. In short, that he doesn't fall into the traps in which he was once mired.

“I know everything's in tip-top shape, so I'm not worried,” assured the next manager, much more relaxed than he was. “And, just in case, I can give you a call.”

“Yes. And if I don't answer right away, leave me a message so I can call you back.”

“I know.”

“I already told you?”

“Yes,” he answered with a big smile. “Come to the meeting room, now. Everyone is waiting for you.”

While he worked out the final details, the rest of the team gathered in the conference room to organize their farewell party. Emily had gone to give them a hand and, looking at his watch, he grasped it had already been over an hour. An excruciating feeling seized his gut as he realized he'd never see this setting again for the rest of his life. He looked around and had the impression of discovering this office with a new acuity. It was as if he'd gone back six years and was setting foot here for the first time.

Then his brain reminded him that this place was only of secondary importance, that by quiting Quantico, he was losing even more. The vise tightened around his insides.

“… Derek, can I ask you a favor?” he began, fixing his gaze once again on his neighbor, who hadn't moved the entire time he'd maintained silence.   

“To take care of them?”

“… Yes.”

A knot was blocking his throat. His men and women, who had worked under him for so long, were clearly dearer to him than he had thought; by leaving, he was abandoning them to their fate, and a terrible tearing sensation opened his chest. He knew, however, that Morgan was naturally protective and caring, so he would always keep an eye on them.

“That was the plan,” he confirmed.

“Be very careful with Penelope and Spencer, they're more...”

“Sensitive than the others, I know,” he cut him off again. “I’m a profiler too. And I'll keep an eye on JJ and Emily who think they don't need any help, and on Dave who still sometimes forgets to play as a team.”

Derek understood that he was trying to delay the fateful moment when he would have to leave this room and never return. By taking the wind out of his sails, he could have given the impression of wanting to kick him out, but Aaron thought instead that he was more concerned about the people standing a few yards away, who were probably wondering what he was up to.

“Meeting room. Now.”

The giant sighed, took one last look at his desk and, with a lump in his throat, walked out to the side of the man who would take his place. He progressed to the room where, all those years ago, he had sat with his kinds around the round table, analyzing photos, coroner's reports, police, and sheriff's reports; where he had listened to their first hypotheses and made crucial decisions that had saved lives or, on the contrary, sacrificed them. This time, he wasn't getting ahead of himself on such a serious subject, but anguish pulsed through his veins all the same. He wasn't afraid of what awaited him there, he was only stressed because every step he took brought him a little closer to the exit and pushed the heavy page of his story within the FBI.

When he entered, he was greeted by a shower of confetti and cotillions, as well as cheers and applause. The whole team was smiling, gathered under a large banner thanking him. Emily, more pregnant than ever, was the only one sitting on a chair, but she clapped her hands as energetically as the others. A wave of heat surged up his torso and his eyes burned instantly. His vision blurred for a moment, submerged by incipient tears. His lungs suddenly constricted. His companion must have noticed his confusion, for she rose from her seat, reached over, and slipped her hand into his. A familiar, reassuring touch that immediately eased his anxiety.

“Th… Thank you,” he managed to stammer, after a long breath.

“No, we wanted to thank you for everything you've done for us,” counteracted Penelope, wiping a tear from her cheek.

“For what? Putting all of you in danger every day?” he ironized, gradually regaining his composure.

“No, that's the job of sociopaths,” JJ grinned.  

Derek had joined the rest of the group and they were all staring at him intently. This final reunion was a delicate moment for everyone, as they all knew that the next one wouldn't be happening any time soon – except on the day of the birth, which would take place in the coming weeks. So many memories and thoughts were running through the mind at the moment that it was difficult to untangle them all and extract what was important to talk about this day. The analyst was the quickest to jump in. 

“Thank you for hiring us despite our strange resumes. Thank you for trusting us all these years. And thank you for looking after us for so long,” she finished, crying, her voice strangled.

He had to hold back to keep from hugging her. It would come, but he had to wait a little longer.

“We're going to miss you,” confessed Spencer, barely audible. 

JJ and her neighbor nodded in unison in support of his words.

“I… I'm going to miss you too,” he said, struggling to control his emotions.

“I'll tell you all about it,” Emily declared, leaning towards him.

He smiled, amused. His partner's intention was to play down the situation, and this worked well enough to lighten the weight in his abdomen. Even with his past in the Bureau, she couldn't tell him the details of their investigations, which were all marked with the seal of confidentiality. On the other hand, she could expand on the hallway noises of the Quantico floors and thus keep him abreast of the latest gossip. Not that he was particularly fond of it, but it would save him from being completely left out when they next met.

He turned his gaze towards her, met her sparkling irises and warm smile, and was seized with a powerful urge to kiss her. But it was something they refrained from doing in public, even if the day's onlookers knew the nature of their relationship. Instead, he shook her hand briefly and she responded by imitating him. Then he turned his attention back to the group, more confident and ready to deliver the messages he'd prepared for each of his subordinates.

“… Thank you, all of you,” he began. “Thanks to you, JJ, for taking on half my work and for having the courage to face the pack of journalists all this time.”

The liaison officer immediately stiffened, and her eyes became misty. He tried to ignore it to get to the end of what he wanted to say.

“You… you do a terrific job and I challenge anyone to do it as well as you. Keep up the good work and take care of Henry and Will. The three of you will always be welcome at home.”

At first, the mother of the family tried to put on a brave face, as she was wont to do in front of the press, but tears quickly rolled down her chin. She stood straight as an I, but he guessed she wanted to hug him. But she knew he hated it.

“You're entitled to a hug, if you like,” he announced, aware that refusing it was cruel of him.

She rushed at him. Emily stepped aside to give her space and allow Aaron to have both hands free. JJ hugged him gently and whispered a “thank you” in his ear. A gentle warmth invaded him, and the unease that usually gripped his throat during this kind of embrace stayed in his corner, allowing him to enjoy the embrace to the full.

“Okay. You're all entitled to one hug each, no more,” he added nonetheless.

Everyone smiled, then JJ pulled away.

“This baby will be so lucky to have you for a dad.”

“We’ll see when they’re teenagers.”

The liaison officer laughed and stepped back to let him continue. His gaze fell on the youngest member of the assembly.

“Spencer, thanks to you for saving us hours of Internet research to find all the information you've got in there,” he said, pointing to his skull. “Thank you for your daily help and stay as you are. What you do is useful to society, don't let anyone make you think otherwise, even if you have the ability to do... whatever you want. And don't pay attention to anyone who might criticize your appearance or attitude. Tell yourself they're just jealous they don't have your brilliant mind.”

An expression of profound delight lit up Reid's youthful face as he straightened up. They'd spent so many evenings talking about everything and nothing before Emily came into his life that he knew these words would touch him and give him back the confidence he so desperately lacked. The big stile walked towards him but froze before doing anything. Neither of them enjoyed embracing – each for different reasons – but he spread his arms, offering him the choice of accepting or not. The multi-graduate finally gave in to temptation and snuggled up against his chest, taking refuge in his bosom as he had once done after being rescued from the clutches of Tobias Hankel. He even tolerated staying a little longer before breaking away from him and making room for the next.

“Penelope, you're probably the person I had the most trouble recruiting,” he admitted with a smile. “Not because I didn't want you, but because everyone above me talked me out of it. But I didn't listen to them...”

“Gosh!” said Emily, making everyone laugh. 

“… and I insisted until they gave up,” he recounted, still remembering the interminable tug-of-war he had back then. “I guess they wanted to see me fail, but I was more than happy to prove them wrong.”

A smile of pride marked the ex-hacker's plump face, as happy as he was to have proved that appearances were not to be trusted.

“Over and above the fact that you're the centerpiece of the BAU, without whom our results wouldn't be as good as they are, you are... you're an incredible person. In every sense of the word. Everything you do is amazing and out of the ordinary, and I think that's why none of us has lost faith in humanity yet.”

A general burst of laughter followed his reply. However, he meant it. Given what they saw on a daily basis, they would naturally become more and more armored over time, until they were no longer capable of appreciating the beauties of the world, or worse, imagining that no human being was worthy of their help. But with her altruistic and benevolent demeanor, she regularly reminded them that not everything in their fellow creatures was worth throwing away.

“As Spencer, stay the way you are. Keep piling knick-knacks all over your office, keep pulling out totally unexpected stuff when you're called, keep disregarding the Bureau dress code and, above all, keep taking care of all those people.”

The fleeting thought that he would no longer see her waiting for him at the elevator exit when they returned from their mission to check that they were in one piece crossed his mind, squeezing his heart.

“Emily said the BAU would fall without me, but I think it's all down to you. I… I probably wouldn't be the man I am today if you hadn't been there to remind me how to smile and laugh. In my own way.”

Penelope burst into tears, unable to make a move in his direction. So, it was he who took the few steps that separated them to take her in his arms. He'd feared she’d be ready to drop every week, but she'd often proved much stronger than he'd expected and, more importantly, had more than once pulled him out of the slump he'd naturally fallen into. She'd been there when he'd had to leave behind the house he'd bought with Haley, she'd been there again when he'd taken in stride the realization that the suspects' profile resembled his own, and so on. She had taken better care of him than he had of her. And her wacky retorts – which horrified Strauss – had always been the breath of fresh air and lightness they needed to endure the drudgery of their daily lives. 

“I love you so much,” she said, sniffing into his neck.

“Me too.”

“Keep smiling and laughing. In your own way.”

“Promise.”

She moved away from him, gave him a trembling smile as she cried some more, and rubbed his arm for a few seconds, as if to give him courage for what was to come. He then came face to face with Dave, who raised an eyebrow at him, his usual sneer at the corner of his lips. A curious sense of déjà-vu seized him. He hesitated and smiled.

“… Okay. It's a bit peculiar to tell you this when I've already done it a few years earlier when you were retiring.”

“It was a feint.”

Aaron laughed, in unison with the profilers around them.

“What I said then still stands, but I'll add that I'm glad you've joined this new version of the BAU. You'll be able to bring them the experience and cunning they're lacking.”

“I'll prepare a PowerPoint to train them.”

The group burst out laughing, more sensitive than ever to these humorous touches given the context.

“From now on, you're the oldest, and I'm counting on you to keep an eye on them.”

“Don't worry, I'll cover them in bubble wrap, so nothing happens to them.”

They laughed again, then both men fell into each other's arms, patting on their back. The manager thanked him in thought for not taking the moment too seriously. He had nothing to fear, however, as his mentor had taken care of him back then, in his own way, and would do so again with his cadets.

“Strauss is likely to be a little bored, so she'll be hanging around.”

“I've already planned to set wolf traps.”

“Perfect,” he commented, grabbing his shoulder.

Rossi distanced himself to allow him to continue his farewell tour. He came face to face with a visage he knew all too well.

“Agent Prentiss.”

“Agent Hotchner,” she replied with the same half-smile.

They watched each other for a long time, silently exchanging all the emotions they felt. There was undeniably a lot of love, but also tenderness and encouragement from the young woman. He also picked up on that characteristic little glow that suddenly motivated him much more to leave the premises.

“… We'll talk later,” he announced, his tone as neutral as possible.

“I can't wait,” she reacted, raising a mocking eyebrow.

“We're not disturbing you, aren’t we?” interjected Derek, grumpily.

“We’ll just talk. Right?”

“Absolutely,” confirmed Aaron, suppressing a smile.

The ex-policeman raised his eyes to the sky, triggering more laughter from his neighbors. The hilarity quickly subsided as everyone realized that it was now the next agency head's turn. The tensions between the two agents were no secret, and it was hard to know how the dialogue would turn out. The giant actually liked the officer a lot, more than he'd ever dare admit to him, and he had every confidence in his ability to take over; but he didn't know how he'd react to what he intended to confide in him.

“Derek…”

“Hotch.”

The Chicago native waited; arms folded across his chest. His neutral expression gave no clue as to what he was feeling at this hour. A deliberate impassivity that unsettled him somewhat. 

“… Uh… I know we've never had an easy relationship.”

“Whose fault is that?” he growled; eyebrows furrowed.

“Derek,” Penelope lectured him, slapping him on the shoulder.

“What? He's the one bugging me to get my texts justified!”

“And he would have stopped bothering you if you had,” Emily pointed out, challenging him with her eyes.

“And I would have done it if it had served a purpose.”

“Say it if we're in your way,” he interjected, eager to get on with things.

“Sorry,” they apologized in unison.

He knew why his lover had come to his defense. She had asked him, out of curiosity, why in fact he demanded that the paragraphs of his subordinates' reports be aligned to the right as well as to the left – a rule not imposed by the Bureau. All his men had fallen into step, one after the other, except him. He was the only one, in a spirit of contradiction, to have disobeyed him through. But it wasn't that important in the end.

“Anyway, as I was saying, we've always, more or less – and rather more than less – had a very complicated relationship. Conflicting, even,” he clarified lucidly. “But I know that behind those muscles and kicked-down doors lies someone who cares deeply for those closest to him. So, I know I'm leaving the team in very good hands.”

He had to pause, suddenly overcome by emotion. Talking to Morgan wasn't just talking to one of the first agents he'd hired, it was passing the baton to his successor. So, it was hard. Very hard.

“You've got a great sense of humor, women really like you and you've got a lot of charisma, but you're also organized, square and straightforward. You don't like injustice and you'll fight every case with the same determination.”

His opposite’s shell cracked, weakened by his sincere words. Derek had always sought recognition for his qualities, and until now, for a reason he couldn't explain to himself, he'd refused it. But now it was done, and his target had been moved. The unit manager outbid him, touching on a crucial point for him.

“You'll watch over them until the end. They can rely on you as they did on me before. Perhaps even more easily than with me.”

“Hotch…”

“Nothing to do with the fact that I'm inexpressive, it's just that you're smaller. It’ll be easier for them to lean on you.”

   Derek frowned, taken aback, and Aaron smiled at him.

“This joke sucks,” decreed his successor.

“Yes.”

They both laughed, as the others looked on moved and amused. He held out his hand and Morgan grabbed it to take him in his arms. The relief the titan felt spread to the spectators around him, and all the pressure that had reigned in the room a few seconds earlier vanished.

“Presents now!” exclaimed Spencer, ecstatic.

“Champagne first!” retorted Dave, serious.

“Don’t fight, we will take care of both,” he reassured them raising his hands.

And he put his words into practice, directing his attention to the center of the table occupied by a stack of wrapped packages. A bottle and some glasses stood by.

“That's my present!" trumpeted Penelope, pointing to the most colorful gift.

It was also the one with the most ribbon, the most glitter and heart stickers applied everywhere. He didn't know what was inside, but he had no doubts about its provenance.

“Yes, I… I guessed that,” he said repressing his urge to smile.

“We all did,” bounced Derek.

Everyone laugh, even the one concerned.

___

I always wanted Hotch to have a proper end and a real scene for his departure from Quantico. Now, it's done. :)

___

First chapter >> https://www.tumblr.com/the-queen-and-the-king/771016298484334592/a-little-piece-of-paradise-1?source=share

Next chapter >> https://www.tumblr.com/the-queen-and-the-king/787501820109012992/a-little-piece-of-paradise-27?source=share

[lcb-oil]

I just want to say I'm cackling at your april fools video, you did a fantastic job with everything from the sprite edits to the music and text! If you ever released the Renp'y script, I'd be over the moon.

Link to the video in question🔗!

It's on my to do list for sure.

I keep telling myself that I want to clean up the code, because I put things together really slapdash to get it done in time for April 1st.

The UI code that I wrote (which does actually handle things like character titles / sinner numbers, coloring the name box, showing the location name) is also functional but... messy!

I'm probably being too precious about it when it is essentially a joke project. If I try to "make it nice" I'll never finish, haha.

For people who've never used Renpy before, the script for the game looks like this:

Overall, not too hard to write!

You asked on anon, so you might not be able to answer me directly, but would a github project be the way people would prefer to get the Renpy script? Or some other way?

...

... I'm really motivated to share it because I'd love to read everyone's custom chapters someday!

[thetentaclecommander]

Commit to the bit.

Life is too fuckin short. And then we die and rot. You got *this* nonsense story idea? With *those* characters? In *that* fandom? That you want to see meet/befriend/fight/debate/fuck/have tea/x *with each other*?? Then do it. And commit. Full on own your idea, cause this fanfic shit is for fun. Shits and giggles. Nothing more, nothing less. Not even to save a pony or topple a dictatorship*. Don't hold back your commitment to this idea because somebody will get mad or will assume the worst of you (they will anyway; assumptive people don't deserve your time). Or your writing skill isn't 'good' - try! I promise in this journey you will over time find that becomes less of an issue. Hell, I'm not the Bard but I'm way better than I was an eternity ago; it's hard typing with tentacles, ok. Or people just won't like it. Spoiler: nothing is universally liked or loved and that's okay. Write it anyway. Like that movie with the cornfield: 'if you build it they will come.' Your people will show up, it just takes time. You are allowed to say 'That's my story and I wrote it exactly as I wanted it.' No debating**, no it has x and this or that blah blah bad blah - nah. It's your story. Folks can go find something else and complain somewhere else, they know how to work a computer. And for all that is holy don't sanitize, nor compromise your vision- I've seen it out in the wild and it kills me whenever authors cave to the pressure when a thing is seen as awful, <insert silly religious scary wording here> and needs changing by an audience that sees your work as a thing to consume seasoned to their tastes and not to enjoy what is freely given by a fan fandoming it up. You will only feel boxed in and resentful so...don't :) Laugh at them and do it MORE. In fact, stand 100% by your work. Hype up that shit! Where is the hype like you did that! You did this crazy thing in your own free time probably stressed af and yet made this story. You made it from your own brain put into text form for others to enjoy. That is so fuckin' cool. Like legit you basically wrote a book so congrats, you legend. Revel in it. But above all else Commit. To. The. Bit. *you could make a fic out of that 'saving a pony dictatorship' idea I suppose, FiM would love you **now, if you ask for actual advice (and not unsolicited crit), take what works and toss what doesn't but don't get mad at crit you directly asked for!

[crazycurly-77]

Bob (16/24)

This is written in the style of the series 24.

Events occur in real time.

Hour 16 of 24: 01:00 pm - 02:00 pm

01:20:12 p.m.

On the coast of Virginia:

As usual, the investigators did their work. They took photos, made sketches, took measurements and secured evidence.

The only visible injury of the body was a single bullet hole right in the heart.

"He must’ve known his murderer. The shot is too precise for anything else," Gibbs guessed.

"It's a shame, I was hoping he could tell us where the admiral's body went," Tony regretted.

"He's pretty quiet now," the boss next to him muttered. At that moment you came over to them and asked: “What are we going to do with those three youngsters over there?”

Gibbs turned to you and simply answered: “Talk to them.”

“But they’re scared as shit and can’t get a word out!” you protested rather listlessly.

The boss just looked at you as if he was about to send you to the penalty box.

So you rolled her eyes and went over to the three of them to try to talk to them.

“Why me? Can’t Tony do that?” you complained in your mind. You turned to him experimentally and looked at him. Maybe you could swap jobs?

But he grinned broadly at you… there was probably no chance that he would agree to a swap.

01:21:56 p.m.

In an abandoned cabin in the middle of the forest in Virginia:

“What do you want from me?” asked John.

At first the senator didn’t answer, he just looked at him. He took another leisurely drag on his cigar, blew out the smoke and then said: “Bob called me… and he’s not happy.”

John groaned in incomprehension and said: “What doesn’t he like? Is the helicopter the wrong color? Did he want a pink one?”

Flowers snorted contemptuously: “You should be careful what you say. He has his ears everywhere.”

John laughed: “Even in the toilet?” he asked provocatively. “Relax, no one will find us here,” he tried to calm the senator.

“Are we suspected?” he wanted to know.

“No. The cops questioned Jack and me, but I made sure that all the evidence pointed to the Colonel and Jack.”

“And they’re buying it?” Flowers asked suspiciously.

Domingo rolled his eyes again, casually put his hands in his pockets and answered:

“Yes. Jack has enough on his plate, he's already made sure of that himself."

01:43:32 p.m.

Jack Smith's apartment, Quantico:

Jack entered his apartment and didn't know what to do. He had done exactly what the Colonel had asked of him.

He went to the investigators and confessed. He told them everything and tried to be as convincing as possible. He was ready to take the blame and yet they let him go.

What will happen now? Now the Colonel will surely make sure that his career in the Marines is over.

Jack lovingly pulled his new girlfriend into his arms: "I missed you, my darling." She sighed, hugged him and whispered: "I missed you too." She kissed him and asked: "How did it go?" He sighed and lowered his head: "I told the cops everything the colonel asked me to do, but I'm afraid they don't believe me."

"Maybe you'll get away without punishment after all?" She tried to encourage him.

He shook his head: "No, I don't think so. The boss of them seemed to see right through me."

He sighed heavily again, dropped his arms and went to the bathroom.

When he closed the door behind him, she took her cell phone and wrote a text message: "It didn't work."

01:54:08 p.m.

NCIS headquarters, director's office:

He had followed an order. That was his job. Leading employees, but also carrying out orders from higher-ups.

Was he happy with that? Most of the time. But giving up responsibility for an important case that directly affected them... was another matter.

But the order was clear: no further investigations by NCIS into the missing helicopter and the Admiral's murder. The situation was not good.

The case should be thoroughly investigated and solved, but if he allowed that to happen, he would be risking his career.

At that moment he received a call:

"Puempel," he answered.

He listened in silence and turned pale. There was another dead body... Colonel Fuller.

A stolen helicopter, of whose existence nobody knew until it was stolen, and now two dead Marines. And they weren't allowed to do anything. Their hands were tied.

But it was time to fight and to take unusual paths if necessary.

1:58:42 p.m. ... the clock was ticking…

------------------------------------------

Here you will find the other chapters of this story.

Back to the overview of this story

Back to the main Masterlist

Back to the alternative Masterlist

------------------------------------------

Tags: @ilovemark1951, @hobby27

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[des-no9]

For the fic ask game! What about 2 and 22? :]

From writing asks here!

talk about a notable time a narrative or character has looked you dead in the eyes and said “fuck your plan, here’s what we’re actually doing.”

Oh boy. Endlessly. I'm very much a writer that goes in and just....writes? and lets the characters take the lead. It's not often I have a set narrative/outline because I know that doesn't happen or work. That restriction on something creative is where much needed structure falls apart for me.

I write a lot of shorter pieces, not much in the way of sprawling novel narratives, so maybe this doesn't come up as starkly as in long form writers. It's probably more smaller and nuance for short form writers (n my experience anyway).

Well actually a big one narratively for Vanquish was I didn't want her to die so soon, or at all mortally (another narrative thread) when she joins Voss, the githyanki and frees herself from Nezarr. But I think she just kind of told me when I was figuring out her narrative and end that no, she was ready to die then. She was tired, sore, but happy.

I feel the same for Voss, so their endings just kind of aligned to me and felt right after she kind of told me "this is what I want". After living two very long lives (relatively) basically for someone else, they get to have these short last years as theirs and they don't need anymore.

It felt really poignant especially for Vanquish as her whole initial fear was her mortality, death and her loss of control over it, and its what got her in such a horrible situation. So it just feels right and nice and makes me emotional haha.

Sorry for rambling like fuck and getting very emotional lol.

describe your writing process from scratch to finish.

Hah oh boy okay.

Okay well, fellow neuro diverse and mentally unwell writes may understand your head also just constantly being on fire with ideas and narrative threads and characters.

The reason I pick a certain one can be anything from: catharthis, just the need to write, spite, horny, prompt, unexplored part of a char, what if what if always what if (why I love rare pairs and side chars), and ofc just the general exploring the fucked up and unknown.

Okay first of all I need: music for the vibe of what I'm going to write. Lately actually ambient 10hr background noise audios have been saving my life. Particularly these two. Cyberpunk 9hrs rain. Cozy cyberpunk loft in the rain 10hr. They've been constant lifesavers for writing lately. I've been finding a lot of lyric songs overstimulating and distracting for writing. I need tea if I'm going to settle in and write something longer. Always.

I often write my shorter things these days in StimuWrite, just opening it up and going for it. For me it has the same feel of writing directly into the tumblr text box which increases my output somehow idk. Having no spellchecker is insanely helpful for me hah. Otherwise I consistently use g-docs, for better or worse. It helps me because I have 4 devices then I can write on, and I can write anywhere on any position (chronic pain wahoo).

I edit as I go in everything I write though (not always catching the spelling mistakes tho, that's different). Constantly editing structure, word choice as I go. It's just easier for me. I'm not a 1st draft, 2nd draft person. All my work is essentially one draft, edited as I go, then as I finish I go over it again before posting.

I usually write linearly because the things I usually write are quite short. But often lines for future scenes, moments etc will just appear as I'm writing a current one and I just quickly write that at the bottom of the document. That happened twice past two days. I wrote a flashback in the cyberpunk AU fic and the ending of it wrote itself while I was writing the opening, so I just wrote it down quickly a few spaces down, then continued writing, editing it slightly into the context of what I ended up writing that followed.

Exact same thing happened writing an Orpheus/Voss yesterday. Ending few lines just wrote themselves as I was writing another line so had to throw them down. Then I wrote the rest of the fic.

For longer things I won't always write scenes in order. Sometimes I'll just write things and shuffle them around. I don't need constant 'seamless scene transitions'. I'm confident enough im my writing and my readers that they can understand what's happening. And this fic is a series of vignettes anyway. Snapshots of various people's lives. It fits the vibe.

When something's finished, if it's something longer, or something professional or for a zine, I'll let it sit for a few days, longer. I need to step away from it to come back with fresh eyes. It helps me edit more objectively, critically, and just help notice dumb shit I did that I maybe wouldn't have if I didn't give myself that break away from it.

For shorter things though, often I just write, edit/proof, immediately post. Sometimes I know there are things I just need to get out there and not worry about, just get out my system, just be stress free, or things I need to stop looking at and let it go.

Thank you so much for the ask love!!! This was very fun !! <33333 sorry it's so long omg hope you enjoyed reading

[emptymanuscript]

I hate the IDEA of hard magic at this point

I have to admit, my tolerance for people bloviating on about magic systems and what makes one good versus another one bad, is wearing very thin these days.

Probably unfairly, I blame Timothy Hickson. He did his own thing which had its own issues but it was ok. It's just that his videos got popular enough that it seems like everybody just kinda took his take as gospel instead of actually doing the work he was doing of trying to extrapolate and learn what he could from Brandon Sanderson's work of developing thought around the. use of magic in fiction.

I haven't heard anyone deviate from Hickson's definitions of hard and soft magic in years. Hickson's definitions aren't actually what Sanderson said. The take is still attributed to Sanderson though. Which makes me strongly suspect that most people these days actually reads the essays Sanderson wrote about his thoughts and opinions that he had developed into his three laws of magic. Which is a shame, they're quite good. Much better than what has been done with them. Until the general popular definitions seem to have actually BECOME how Hickson defined it in his early Hello Future Me videos, while he was learning.

I've actually got four of Hickson's book sitting in my giant TBR pile of creative writing texts that I simply haven't gotten around to. At this point he's really DONE THE WORK. So I'm curious if he fits his own mold and has developed it better or switched his ideas around.

Sanderson's Laws of Magic essays are here by the way:

1st Law: An author’s ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

2nd Law: Limitations are greater than powers.

3rd Law: Expand what you already have before you add something new.

I should remember to add these to my rec list instead of just the link to the videos of his 318R creative writing classes at BYU, which are also very good and worth looking up.

One of the things I actually deeply admire about Sanderson is that he does take a moment of intellectual humility and specifies that he developed his laws out of a difference in taste from a panel he was on where he disagreed with other panelists who were also successful fantasy writers and that these are not hard and fast universal rules that cannot be bent or even broken but they are steeped as best he is able in his working experiential knowledge of being a successful fantasy author in order to try and accommodate both points of view, not merely elevate his own as best even as that is where he concentrates.

Everyone else I've run into makes the nod to that but I haven't yet dealt with anyone who really does much of any work there beyond the lip service to the idea that alternatives work.

The really deep problem is that most of us talking about magic are not actually accomplished authors of magic with lots of experience in the mass audience reaction to our work depending on the variables we tinker with. We usually have some inkling of how things are working for ourselves and our close associates but that is a quite limited base of critical response to work with. Sanderson CAN do what he did because he simply has significantly more to work with than most people do. Sanderson not only has the experience of professional practice with his own aesthetics, he has the experience of forcing himself into the aesthetic box of other authors. He's simply, significantly better qualified than most people who write on this subject than the extreme majority of people who do. That's just how it is.

We might have the chops, we might not. Generally, we don't really know. But to be completely fair, part of doing this sort of thing is doing it confidently, even if you aren't actually confident. Confidence is necessary. So I can't begrudge anyone their speaking authoritatively.

I do begrudge the fundamental flaws in the argument though. And they're everywhere. They're so commonplace that they betray the other really deep problem of the incestuous echo chamber that this sort of information and advice is developing inside of. It's a naturally self selecting audience, with limited experience in practical execution of the subject and breadth of source materials for examples of the subject, both primary and secondary.

I don't think the ideas have been around quite long enough for there to be any major tertiary sources.

I don't think there are enough secondary sources that can make any kind of conversation that could fuel tertiary material from the comparison.

Partly because most of the people doing this work don't have enough primary texts under their belt to realize this isn't covering it. And most of them share so many of their primary sources and a deep attachment to the same endeavors because of the self selection of the audience, that the argument for the primary line of thought to seem apparent.

IF everybody has read Brandon Sanderson's books as THE exemplar of "Hard Magic," Played a buttload D&D as their primary source of worldbuilding play experience, read Lord of the Rings under the impression that it is both the origin and magnum opus of Epic Fantasy, hangs around on r/magicbuilding because that's where you go, has uncritically digested the hero's journey as how genre fiction works, has gotten into LitRPG because it is really capturing that kind of fun which you don't really have time for anymore because of adulting, and - in spite of the quite different population statistics around all those previous data points - are mostly white protestant christian men from the United States in the first half of life THEN there's a real finger on that scale, the measure is highly biased in and of itself.

It's not universally true. I quite like the worldbuilder I watch who is a middle aged woman from northern Europe. So I know there are plenty more out there but there is a definite lean in who is thinking about these things and their backgrounds and what they are consuming as the basis for forming these opinions.

And it's not universally bad. The stuff they're saying absolutely can work as it is. It's just too small a pond to represent the sea that it is being presented as.

You can make a "hard magic system" as they describe it, if you want to. It will work. And that you want to will probably up its ability TO work. Because this IS a self selection issue. The people most likely to really hunt down rules of magic building are going to be the people most likely to enjoy playing with rule systems for fun. People who aren't as interested in that kind of interactional systems logic puzzle simply aren't going to look as hard for such things. Unfortunately, they're still going to get exposed to it by osmosis. So it is going to leak into them as the way things SHOULD be done as the default.

Once they get that message, even if they push back and try to go argue for the "soft magic" that they like, they'll find they're doing the work from scratch because so little has been developed for them, while the "hard magic" people have all this codified material ready to go. They can whip out 100+ videos on this on demand, pull up a quote from Sanderson, and conveniently ignore that all these ideas are descended from one point of initiation and we've pretty much just been in the process of iteration rather than debate and synthesis.

The equivalent level of critique work is not being done. There equivalent level of alternative systems work is not being done. And that's a lot of work for one person to do. I expect most would simply give up on sight. But that inherently means that the system that is iterating is flawed as a general basis of what a person should do. It is too limited, even within its own local cultural setting.

I suspect it is actually part of why LitRPG is taking off. No shade intended. I like LitRPG. But I think it is growing as much because of the author side of it, which conforms to this line of thought which has been going on long enough that it predates the LitRPG market, as it is growing from audience demand. Again, no shade intended. There's plenty of fun to write in it and there's a good lineage from other genres that it is drawing from when it is all ticking along smoothly. But it is fairly perfectly iterative of this idea of Hard Magic as it is experienced by the people who are thinking the most about it and have the least experience of challenges to it.

But trace it back to Sanderson instead of going with Hickson's work, that idea isn't there.

There isn't such a thing as a hard magic SYSTEM or a soft magic SYSTEM. It's a subgenre distinction of texts. It's not what the author CREATES as much as it is what the audience CONSUMES. What makes it hard or soft isn't the behind the scenes mechanics. It's the same differentiation between hard and soft science fiction. One shows you the clockwork of how the science works and one does not. The authors developing the story can use the exact same methodology of development behind the scenes but produce either kind of work depending on how much they SHOW to the audience.

Does the audience understand the magic well enough to correctly extrapolate what can be done with it before the text shows that that particular use can be done? That makes it hard magic. Not the rule set itself, how well the audience can work with it. To do that, the author does need to understand it at least that well themselves but that's it.

If the audience can't understand the magic well enough to correctly EXTRAPOLATE (not merely anticipate) what can be done with the magic before the text shows them it can do that, it's soft magic. This in no way compels the author not to develop rules or concepts. They can have an intense understanding or not. Their understanding is immaterial. It's the audience's ability to work with it that matters. Plenty of soft magic actually DOES rely on audience anticipation of the correct spell to solve its problems. Soft magic tends to make a habit of showing the basic idea of the ultimate spell solution by having a lesser version of the same spell cast early on in the text.

Note that this exactly conforms to all three of Sanderson's Laws. It fulfills them all eloquently. It uses what is already there, it (usually) does not overcome a fundamental ultimate limit because it has been shown to be possible in another form already, and because it has already been shown the reader already understands the magic in principle. They simply didn't see it in this precision application.

That's what I mean by accommodation. Sanderson's rules aren't about Hard Magic in specific, they're illustrating the debate between the two different sets of expectations. He's setting up the spectrum of what these things mean.

It's later iterators who have divvied things up and presented this internal definition of this is what hard magic is: a back end system developed by the author that explains how the magic works in an internally logical and consistent way, with strictly limited inputs and outputs determined by AT LEAST that internal logic, which can be demonstrated in a piece of art made according to that with relative ease to the audience by example so they can work out what that system and its internal logic is. And soft magic is NOT that.

Which is bullshit because it is tremendously ARTIFICIALLY constraining. Again, it can work well. But it describes far too little to govern how we think about these things.

It's the same problem of saying there was no Fantasy before Tolkien or no Fantasy that wasn't inspired by him. Yes you have to DEAL with him and his influence. In the same we all still have to deal with Harry Potter, it's simply too big and too influential to not consider how you're going to work in relation to it, whether you draw on any of it or not, because it is highly likely to be in your audience's brain. That doesn't mean you have to emulate it. That doesn't mean you have to contrast it. That doesn't mean you have to deconstruct it. It just means that you have to be aware where your audience might insert an idea from there that you don't want and head them off before they run with it.

That's literally why Zephyr has silk sheets in the Hidden and the Maiden. Because he sleeps in his closet and I describe the silk sheets before I describe the closet so the reader, who has probably read Harry Potter, possibly just before reading the hidden and maiden D:<, doesn't leap to any incorrect assumptions about my text because of associations with that other text.

And as we collapse what magic is "supposed" to look like, it doesn't only get incestuous in the discussions, it makes the breadth of what is most available collapse as well, forcing the mainstream of fantasy fiction along these lines when there are so many other possibilities to exploit and enjoy.

And I'll shut up now.

[flowerparrish]

FIC WRITING REVIEW 2024

Thank you to @42donotpanic for tagging me in this!! I am so pleased with how much fic I actually ended up writing this year, and I was only recently compiling my stats, so I've been really excited to share since you tagged me!

Rules: Feel free to show whatever stats you have. Only want to show Ao3 stats? Rock on. Want to include some qualitative info instead of stats? Please do this. Want to change how yours is presented? Absolutely do that. Would rather eat glass than do this? Please don’t eat glass but don’t feel like you have to do this either.Artists and gif makers, please also join in with any quantitative or qualitative stats or facts you want to share about your year.

Words & Fics

56,756 words posted across 51 works!

Average length written per posted fic: 1112 words!

Drabbles written: 5 drabbles, 4 double drabbles, 1 triple drabble, 1 quadruple drabble

Months I posted the most fics: October (12), Dec (10), and August (10)

Months I posted the most words: August (14,248), Dec (11,882), and Feb (9,441)

Months I didn't post any writing: June & July

Top Fandoms

Star Wars (13 works, 17,035 words)

Danny Phantom x DC (11 works, 15,258 words)

Marvel/DC (10 works, 8,858 words)

Marvel (4 works, 7,134 words)

DC (8 works, 2,968 words)

Top Ships

Danny Fenton/Jason Todd (4 works, 3365 words)

Tim Drake/Danny Fenton (3 works, 7110 words)

Bucky Barnes/Clint Barton (3 works, 6158 words)

Bucky Barnes/Clint Barton/Jason Todd (3 works, 2156 words)

Clint Barton/Roy Harper (2 works, 3675 words)

Top 3 By Comments

So I Choke On Sun (DPxDC, gen, 2.5k words) - 51 comment threads

How to Put Your ADHD Gremlin to Sleep: A Guide by Jason Todd (DC, gen, 810 words) - 25 comment threads

Can I have your autograph? (DPxDC, Tim/Danny, 5k words) - 21 comment threads

Top 5 By Kudos

So I Choke On Sun (DPxDC, gen, 2.5k words) - 1,201 kudos

Something Magical (DPxDC, Danny/Jason, 925 words) - 858 kudos

Green String of Fate (DPxDC, Danny/Jason, 1.4k words) - 773 kudos

Can I have your autograph? (DPxDC, Danny/Tim, 5k words) - 726 kudos

How to Put Your ADHD Gremlin to Sleep: A Guide By Jason Todd (Batfam gen, 810 words) - 668 kudos

Fandom Events I Wrote For in 2024:

I wrote for many Who Wrote That? games for @haunting-heroes-creative-games! Those included:

WWT - Olympics: 4 fics, 8567 words

WWT - Demon Twins: 1 fic, 2576 words

WWT - Soulmates: 3 fics, 2445 words

WWT - Lightning Round: 3 drabbles (300 words)

WWT - Ancients: 1 fic, 250 words

Likewise, for @marvel-dc-crossover-event s, I did:

WWT - Poly Pool Noodles: 1 fic, 391 words

Title Roulette: 1 fic, 2001 words

Marvel/DC 48 Hr Exchange: 5 fics, 4939 words

Holiday Elfing: 1 fic, 2868 words

Other Events Included:

@pod-together, for which I wrote 1 fic of 2,494 words

@clonebang (2023), for which I co-wrote a 10k fic, 4122 words of which were mine

@marveltrumpshate, for which I wrote 1 fic of 3,090 words

@voiceteam Mystery Box (2023) & VT 2024, for which I wrote 1 fic each, of 825 words & 466 words respectively

Yuletide, for which I wrote 3 works totaling 4075 words!

& lastly, Cozytober 2024, for which I wrote 4 fics & exactly 800 words total!

Writing Reflections:

This year, majority of the writing I finished & posted fit one of two categories: "event" or "I had this fun little idea and wrote it out real quick". I think what I can draw from that is twofold. First, I really do thrive when writing is a community activity. I like to write when it's part of a greater effort at engaging with people and building friendships and spreading joy. Second, I got way happier about writing when it began shifting from something I felt like I had to do / should be doing, to something I could just do for fun with quick little things and then toss out into the world. Majority of my fics this year were only cursorily checked over for SPAG issues or not beta'd at all, and a significant number of the short ones were written directly into the ao3 text box and posted without further thought, including "A Guide to Putting Your ADHD Gremlin to Sleep," which ended up being one of my most popular works of the year & honestly all time. This is not to say I put no thought into anything I wrote, because my other most popular work ("So I Choke on Sun") is one I spent weeks working on, despite how short it is, because I knew what I wanted to try to convey in it, and I ended up intensely proud of how it turned out. But I think I wrote so much this year because I really fell back in love with writing for fun first and foremost, and writing as an act of community involvement as a close second, and I really hope to carry that into the new year!

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Thank you again to 42dnp for tagging me, this was so good to reflect on and such a positive way to spend my morning! <3

[suddencolds]

sending u a star!! ⭐️ sorry i wanted to go thru and pick a specific fic but im too sleepy lol but any yvescent piece u had thoughts on :D

[from Fanfic Writers - Director's Cut]

hello!!! THANK YOU N, IT MADE ME REALLY HAPPY TO RECEIVE THIS 🥹🥹🥹

I also realize am responding to this like 2 months late :') I thought for a long time on which fic to comment on, and now that I've posted Atypical Occurrence pt. 2, I thought I might as well write out my thoughts on it while they're still fresh and bc it's close to my heart (I hope that's okay hehe)

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⚠️❗️ Warning that I will be attaching snippets from my deleted drafts below!! Please read the published installment before you proceed to read this post. This is a little embarrassing... all I can say is that those drafts were deleted for a reason 🥴

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There’s a grocery store that’s a ten minute drive from Vincent’s apartment. 

I rewrote this scene... 3 or 4 times? It gave me sooo much trouble 😭 I think in the first draft Vincent actually tears up tasting Yves's cooking. (I know, Vincent, I want Yves to cook for me too 😭❗️)

Terrible (ugh 😭) first draft screenshot under the cut (screenshot = old draft, indented quote = current draft):

(Yves pulling up a chair at the end... you can tell he is totally at a loss on what to do 😭 and I, too, was at a loss on what to do)

I wrote this ^, and I was like... this moment just feels unearned? I personally despise outlining + I love going in (mostly) blind. Sometimes the first draft works out of the box, and in this case, the first draft (and the second draft, and the third draft) were all soooo bad that I literally had to take a month-long break to regain my confidence 😭

Anyways! I knew right away that Y was going to cook something for V (it's mentioned here and there throughout the series that he is a really good cook 😭 And in part 3 of Fool Me Twice, Yves promises to make Vincent something more ambitious than hot chocolate. He's finally kept his promise now, 12 installments later 🙇‍♀️ )

From draft 2, there was only one scene which I was sure I was going to include in the final draft, aka, spared from the recycling bin. (But I just checked the final draft and it's nowhere to be seen?? Interesting.)

I would have managed fine on my own.

On this (deleted) scene, and more broadly: I think it's important to me that Yves recognizes that Vincent is self-sufficient in many ways: when Vincent says he will be fine alone, he is telling the truth. Yves doesn't have to stay—he recognizes this too, when he heads for the door in the published draft.

Still, Yves stays, of course—initially, because he insists, and later, because Vincent asks :)

“…You won’t leave unless I eat, then,” Vincent says. He says it evenly enough that it barely registers as a question. Yves smiles at him. It’s not a wrong conclusion. “Exactly,” he says.

It was really, really fun writing the differences between caretaker!Vincent (in Fool Me Twice pt. 5) and caretaker!Yves 😊 I usually don't like to say too much on the end of character analysis, bc I like my work to be interpreted as it is: the text is canon, and everything I'm saying here is just me yapping on about my headcanons. (I have been roasted for saying this by a dear friend of mine, probably rightfully so:)

With that disclaimer: Vincent to me (I can only speculate, etc) is a very no-bullshit caretaker (he likes to enforce whatever will lead most directly to the person's recovery; he actually worries a lot, but his worry often manifests as frustration/snappishness), whereas Yves is a lot more permissive and, for the most part, manages his stress—he is the eldest sibling, after all! I think he does what he can to make it a more tolerable experience :)

“So this is just a Yves thing.” “What? Showing consideration for my friends?”  “Showing consideration is one thing,” Vincent answers. “You could have left after dropping off the files. You would still have been showing your consideration.” “I guess that’s true. But at that point, I was already here,” Yves says, with a shrug. “It seemed logical to check up on you.” “Well, now you’ve checked up on me,” Vincent says. “So you can go.” Yves supposes this is true.

Vincent takes things very literally (and I think he's actually quite aware of the social niceties around these kinds of things, which is in part why he is so skeptical to assume that Yves means anything more.)

There’s a hand on his sleeve, tugging. Yves goes very still. When Vincent notices what he’s done, alarm flashes through his expression, and he pulls his hand away as if he’s burned.  “Sorry,” he murmurs, again. And just like that, he’s back to how he always is—his expression perfectly, carefully neutral, in a way that can only be constructed. “I’m sorry.” But Yves doesn’t forget what he’s seen. “You can go.”

This scene means a lot to me!! It took a loooot of editing to hammer into place (the doc I wrote it on is titled "fixing this scene would FIX ME" haha). I think this is the first time Vincent has actively sought out Yves's comfort 😭 And he regrets it almost as soon as he's said it, because he does not do things without a good justification, and wanting something—even wanting it badly—does not feel like a sufficient justification to him. But give Yves an inch and he will take a mile!! He will take a hundred miles!! That is just the kind of person that Yves is.

I was talking with some friends previously about how I wanted to write Vincent reaching out for Yves. How I wanted Vincent to, through the haze of fever, cross a line that he'd previously not allowed himself to cross :') I think it is a time-old trope to have someone, in their feverish delirium, utter something embarrassing and utterly uncharacteristic of them, or divulge something that has been difficult for them to say.

This whole time drafting, I was thinking, how can I set up a moment like that and have it feel earned? How badly would he have to be feeling? What kind of setup would justify getting past his 590859 mental defenses? (I do not like to outline, but sometimes I do have an emotional beat that I have in mind, and then I have to work backwards to figure out the setup. This took SO much working back from, and I really thought about it for very long). I was almost sure that Vincent would regret it immediately after too 😭

Yves opens his arms out in offering, tries on a smile. “I’ve been told I give good hugs. Good enough to cure all ailments, obviously.”

Ahh, so Y offering V a hug is inspired by a fic I read 6 years ago, where a character offers another a hug as a joke and then the other character surprises them by taking it. Yves is really offering here, but I think he recognizes that joking about it will make it easier for Vincent to accept 😭

Yves has hugged a fair share of people in his life. He doesn’t think he’d be able to list them all if he were asked to. It’s different, though, being so close to Vincent—so close that Yves can reach out and let his hair fall through his fingertips. He can lift up his palm and feel the rigid line of his spine, the slope of his shoulders; he could reach out and trace the dip of his wrist, the form of his hand. Vincent’s chin digs slightly into his left shoulder. His nose is turned slightly into Yves’s neck—like this, he is almost perfectly still. Yves can feel the warm brush of air against his neck whenever Vincent exhales. He is so close that Yves is afraid, for a moment, that he might hear how badly his heart is racing.

I have nothing to say about this paragraph except that I edited it for like 40 minutes straight.

Last thing!!

“We had a habit of keeping the heat off, in the winters, and closing the windows.”

The scene near the end (where Vincent tells Yves about his childhood) is actually the scene which came the most easily to me. I also did not write it last; I jumped around. It took me around 1.5 hours. (By comparison, simply editing the scene before it took 11 😵‍💫)

I did always intend for Vincent to disclose... well, /something/ about himself. (You can tell that when I plan, that's really as far as I plan LOL)

Anyways, when Vincent wakes Yves up (after Yves falls asleep at his desk), I initially wrote it so that Yves wakes Vincent from a nightmare.

But (as direct a link to vulnerability as that might have been,) Vincent would not talk about his nightmare 😭 So I switched gears.

I also specifically wanted to write about Vincent's experience being cared for growing up. I think something that's culturally resonant with me (as an Asian American, and the eldest daughter to immigrant parents) is like, the ways families can and cannot say I love you—the quiet things that are done in place of a more direct expression of it. The way that while unspoken consideration can speak volumes, it can just as easily be invisible. But even now, writing this post, I feel like it's difficult for me to untangle the feelings and experiences I've had into something that feels sufficiently multifaceted.

Vincent has a different childhood from I do (it is probably worth noting that I do not project onto any of my characters, nor do I use them as a vessel to get my own experiences across). I think I'm just drawn to writing tricky/non-straightforward expressions of love, in general :) Sometimes that is the kind of love that resonates with me most.

[foultastemusic]

Power of noises and vaginas - a thought

For two decades now, post-hardcore has been considered a sub-genre descended from hardcore, which in turn was considered a sub-genre descended from punk, and which in turn... well, it's not important to put musical genres and sub-genres into boxes purposely organized to fit people and their ways of dressing and other useless aesthetics promoted by media/digital cultures. But for two decades now, post-hardcore has been asserting itself as a well-defined genre, with well-defined textural characteristics, as well as certain types of chords and experimentalist riffs in the nostalgic-depressive world, heartfelt screams with a poetically sad story to tell in the most imperfect and dirty way possible, where D.I.Y. is valued in the various arts that embrace recorded and live music.

In 2003, music researcher Jessica Hopper wrote the review "Emo: Where the Girls Aren't" for a column in Punk Planet 56. It was already in the cradle of the emo thing at the beginning of the century that we noticed an absence of girls at concerts - at first there was no mention of them playing or making music, but even their absence from the public as listeners / active participants in this subculture and community. Girls began to enter this world in a very controversial and unrevolutionary way, but always with all the freedom.

Obviously, through the promotion that took place on the internet on the various platforms, the genre reached more stages, more people, more musical cultures and gained a large structure. Girls (like everyone else) start going to these places, often through an interest they already had in other genres such as indie, punk, metal, etc., and as soon as they buy a ticket to go to a concert, we have a group of 50 young men talking about love, depression, nature and other "weaknesses" seen through the eyes of toxic contemporary masculinity. And girls are welcome here. They will always be welcome until they start making music out of fear, because in punk they've already had the chance to revolutionize themselves and post-hardcore/screamo gives voice and space to boys who also suffer from prejudice.

Hopper talks about this band that dedicates a song (Strike Anywhere - Refusal, 2001) to the girls about their problems and lives, and claims that we need more of that: protection and respect. But this hasn't happened and girls still don't feel encouraged and empowered: they are an inspiration for the experiences and texts of this subculture, they are desired as artists and recreationists, and even though they aren't sexualized or repudiated in all cases, they feel obliged to get on the boys' knees to make it too, perhaps even better. A fight against meritocracy, male dependency in order to learn or be promoted and supported, where we are ALL programmed to think that we have a sex organ between our legs and that public reception is influenced by this: either in a positive or a negative way.

«And so I watch these girls at emo shows more than I ever do the band. I watch them sing along, see what parts they freak out over. I wonder if this does it for them, if seeing these bands, these dudes on stage resonates and inspires them to want to pick up a guitar or drum sticks. Or if they just see this as something dudes do, because there are no girls, there is no them up there. I wonder if they are being thwarted by the FACT that there is no presentation of girls as participants, but rather, only as consumers – or if we reference the songs directly – the consumed. I wonder if this is where music will begin and end for them. If they can be radicalized in spite of this. If being denied keys to the clubhouse or airtime will spur them into action».

- Jessica Hopper (2003)

Girls are not yet part of this music, or at least not in a direct or comfortable way. Perhaps through music promotion, the organization of concerts, photographs and poster designs, perhaps through their words adopted by these boys or the desires and utopias of an all-embracing subcultural milieu that, although they may all agree and share the same idea, refuses to accept that they are not welcome altogether, completely. Perhaps they are, but ever since men began to dominate this music or all music, they have needed reasons to pick up a guitar without the issue of sexual gender being brought into the listening experience or even to politics. Would it be better to ignore the gender issue at all costs (until this argument is normalized) or to promote the importance of giving girls a voice to help empower them, as has been happening in punk and hardcore (until this issue becomes part of the contemporary elements of screamo)? Maybe no one has the answers, but the reality is that girls continue to enjoy and consume this music without drumsticks in their hands.